Satan is targeting U.S. — Santorum

Ex-Sen. Rick Santorum, in a 2008 Florida speech that resurfaced last week, argued that the United States is coming under direct attack from Satan.

“Satan has set his sights on the United States of America,” the future Republican presidential candidate told an audience at Ave Maria University, an ultra-conservative Catholic college in Florida.

” Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using the great vices of pride, vanity and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition,” Santorum added.

The Santorum speech first surfaced on the rightwingwatch.org web site and was picked up Tuesday by The Drudge Report, a widely read conservative web site with links to the Mitt Romney campaign.

In recent days, Santorum has used the phrase “phony theology” in an apparent questioning of President Obama’s faith — he later said he meant Obama’s “radical” environmental views — and has claimed that “religious liberty” in America is under assault.

Other Republican candidates, notably 1992 and 1996 presidential challenger Patrick Buchanan, have spoken of an America engaged in a “cultural war.” Santorum carried the rhetoric a step further.

“This is a spiritual war,” he said at Ave Maria, “and the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country — the United State of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age.”

Santorum used the occasion to verbally read liberal Protestant churches out of Christianity.

“We look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles,” he said. “It is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.”

An initial reaction came from the right’s mightiest mouthpiece — Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh defended Santorum on his radio show, but said the candidate has some explaining to do.

“It’s part of the predictable attempt to impugn Santorum as an absolute nut and wacko,” Limbaugh intoned, “but he did say these things and he’ll have to have an answer for these things when queried.”